


you won't find love in a hole

by torigates



Category: Alice (2009)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-23
Updated: 2010-12-23
Packaged: 2017-12-31 11:56:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torigates/pseuds/torigates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alice dreams of Wonderland nightly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you won't find love in a hole

 

 

  


  
Alice dreams of Wonderland nightly.

Her dreams are vivid and bright to the touch, taste. Alice wants to grab hold of each one individually, and hold them together, string them along until they make up the whole of Wonderland. As if she could only find all the right parts they would make up what she had lost.

Alice knows she should be thankful. She knows she should remember everything she’s gained: the truth about her father, Hatter. She should be grateful for what she found, yet all she can do is focus on what she lost.

The bright, pale expanse of her forearm is a constant reminder.

Everything seems duller now, and if this is why the Wonderlanders needed to take advantage of the emotions from her own world, Alice has a little more sympathy for them.

Hatter brews tea constantly. The apartment is filled with steam and scents and the continual whistling of the kettle. It makes Alice wonder what exactly he’s trying to recover.

She watches him bustle around their small kitchen, mixing ingredients, fiddling with sugar and milk, searching for the perfect combination. Each time, he presents her with a piping mug, and Alice smiles and sips from it slowly.

Alice starts sketching. The green leaf, ever present in her mind, absent from her forearm. She wants to get it right, to recreate that image. The symbol of her journey that says, _this happened to you. You’re not crazy._ She sketches it again, and again, and every time it’s not quite right. The leaves are too pointy, or there aren’t enough of them.

“What are you doing?”

Hatter’s voice startles her. Alice is sitting at the kitchen table in their apartment. He places the steaming mug of tea in front of her, and Alice inhales the warm aroma. She smiles her thanks.

“Just doodling,” she says.

“Isn’t that—?” he asks.

“Yeah. I can’t get it right.”

He sits down next to her. Alice misses his hat.

“I feel,” she says.

He leans forward and kisses her. It’s almost enough.

Alice dreams. She dreams and she sketches until finally she gets it right.

She doesn’t tell anyone her plan. She doesn’t think they’ll understand. Even Hatter, she feels won’t quite get why she wants this, why she _needs_ this.

The tattoo parlour is dark and dingy from the outside. Alice walks past it twice before she even finds it, then spends another thirty minutes pacing outside its entrance. When she finally gathers her courage and pushes the door open, the inside is bright and clean. Sterile, just like the box in which they tried to contain her when she first arrived in Wonderland.

The tattoo artist is a petite redhead, her arms and neck and back decorated with stories that Alice longs to hear. Alice shows her the picture and the woman smiles like she recognizes the design. Alice isn’t sure if she believes it, or just wants it to be true.

It hurts like hell. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

“What’s this?” Hatter asks when he finally sees her arm.

They’re in bed. Alice kept it hidden all day. She’s not sure why she felt she had to protect it.

“You know what it is,” she told him.

His fingers curl around her wrist. His grip is firm, sure. He looks at her, and Alice drinks him in, this wonderful, strange man. She wonders, maybe, if it wasn’t that she was looking for something, but rather that she was trying to hold on to something. To him. To prove that, yes, she’s his. She wants to give, give, give. She wants him.

His fingers trail up her arm, over the raw, still sensitive skin there. “Why?” he asks.

She shrugs one shoulder, and uses her other hand to tuck her hair behind her ear. “I wanted to.”

He stares at her in wonderment, and wraps his hand around behind her elbow. Alice feels a sharp tug, and finds herself in his lap, her thighs on either side of him. His hand moves from her elbow to her waist, his fingers flexing there. She feels breathless.

“You didn’t have to,” he tells her.

That, Alice knows. Before she can tell him, he leans forward and captures her mouth in a passionate kiss. Alice feels her heart leap up to her throat, before it plummets down to her stomach. The butterflies there doing wicked things.

His hands slide down her thighs, and back up, his fingers leaving burning trails on her skin. They continue up, up until her arms go up, and Alice feels the cool air on her now naked flesh. Hatter kisses her, his hands on her sides, on her breasts. Alice feels him move against her, and suddenly, she feels the crisp sheets pressed against her back.

He kisses down her neck, over her collarbone, his hands making quick work of her panties. Alice gasps when she feels his hands on her, pressing in. Her hands are on his back, she digs her nails into his skin, and Hatter presses closer.

“Hatter,” she gasps, and pushes at his boxers.

He continues to press against her, and Alice runs her hands down his back, over his shoulders and arms, urging him on. He gasps her name, and when he finally, finally pushes in, Alice can’t remember what she was ever looking for.

He pulls her close and everything is enough. It’s more than enough.

After, they lie spent in her bed, and Hatter runs his fingers over her arm and shoulder and collar bone. His fingers tracing invisible patters in her skin, and finally circling around the outline of her tattoo.

“It felt wrong,” she said, her head resting on his shoulder. “Without it there.”

He nodded and kissed the top of her head.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said, craning her neck to look at him.

He smiled at that. “I am too.”

“I’m sorry you had to leave your home.”

He kissed her again, his arms going around her waist. “You’re my home,” he said.


End file.
